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Linux Parallel Processing HOWTO

Hank Dietz, pplinux@ecn.purdue.edu

v980105, 5 January 1998


Parallel Processing refers to the concept of speeding-up the execution of a program by dividing the program into multiple fragments that can execute simultaneously, each on its own processor. A program being executed across N processors might execute N times faster than it would using a single processor. This document discusses the four basic approaches to parallel processing that are available to Linux users: SMP Linux systems, clusters of networked Linux systems, parallel execution using multimedia instructions (i.e., MMX), and attached (parallel) processors hosted by a Linux system.

1. Introduction

2. SMP Linux

3. Clusters Of Linux Systems

4. SIMD Within A Register (e.g., using MMX)

5. Linux-Hosted Attached Processors

6. Of General Interest


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